Weekly - NASA begins development of nuclear-powered SR-1 Freedom spacecraft and more
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NASA begins development of nuclear-powered SR-1 Freedom spacecraft
Last week, NASA announced that it has begun development of its revolutionary new Space Reactor-1 Freedom interplanetary spacecraft. Many previous missions, such as Voyager-1, Voyager-2, and Cassini, have used RTGs (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators), which generate electricity from the natural decay of radioactive isotopes. However, RTGs are not nuclear reactors and function more as passive energy sources.
A few spacecraft—especially several launched by the Soviet Union before the 1980s—did use active nuclear reactors to generate electricity. What makes the proposed SR-1 Freedom unique is that, unlike all the examples above that use nuclear energy only to generate electricity for onboard instruments, it uses a nuclear reactor for interplanetary propulsion.
It does this by using electricity from a nuclear reactor to power ion thrusters, which provide continuous acceleration. While ion thrusters are already widely used, this would be the first time they are powered by a nuclear reactor in space.
